Hellobee

We decided that we weren’t going to find out the bambino’s sex before delivery. One downside to the unknown sex is selecting clothes. I’m totally in favor of boys wearing purple and girls doing it up in blue, but anything with color seems to also have very stereotypical gender designs on it. The blue stuff is covered with trucks and anything purple is swathed in butterflies. Even if I did know the gender of my baby, I’d want something unique.

I hunted for fun, affordable, colorful, gender-neutral clothes, but so far I’ve struck out. Everything I do find is pale yellow, pale green, or white – it’s just seems so boring to this color-loving girl.

My solution: customize a bunch of white onesies and kimono t-shirts by dying and then appliquéing them. Every newborn needs couture clothing, right? It’s especially great when custom baby clothing costs less than five bucks!

Here’s a peek at what I’ve done so far:

Please excuse the wrinkles. Although I’m not above ironing baby clothes, it didn’t happen this time.

It’s a two step process, so we’ll start with the dye. Have you ever found solid colored onesies in bright colors? I haven’t, so I made my own. Here’s what you’ll need to dye a onesie:

1)   White onesies or any 100% cotton baby clothes. The dye won’t absorb on synthetics like polyester or nylon (note in the above photos how the thread in the stitching stays white). Before you dye them, wash them. Lots of clothes come coated with sizing, and if you don’t remove it, the dye doesn’t absorb properly. Use a gentle detergent without added fragrances. Also, skip any kind of fabric softener. One packet of dye is good for 8 ounces of dry fabric.  A typical short-sleeve newborn onesie weighs 1.5 oz, so you can probably dye about five onesies per batch of dye.

2)   Dye. I used Dylon Permanent Fabric Dye in Sunflower Yellow and Goldfish Orange. Each packet is $2.99 and I buy it at Jo-Ann Fabrics, though I’m sure most craft stores carry it. This is a powdered dye – it’s dangerous to inhale it; if you’re really concerned, or can’t work in a well ventilated area, skip the powdered dyes and try a liquid Rit dye instead. (FYI: This isn’t a “kid friendly” project, and obviously, don’t leave the dye sitting around where someone will eat it.)

3)   Bucket and spoon. Trust me, you don’t want to use the same stuff you eat food out of, no matter how anxious you are to get started (I’m not speaking from personal experience or anything). Go to the Dollar Store, buy a plastic bucket and a spoon.

4)   Rubber gloves. It’ll not only keep your hands a normal color, but it’s the safe thing to do. Dye is a chemical. Don’t cheat.

5)   Salt. Plain old table salt is fine. You’ll need 4 tablespoons per dye packet, so plan accordingly.

6)   Warm water.

As mentioned above, it’s dangerous to inhale powdered dye. There aren’t excessive warning labels on the dye packets, but a little online research made me cautious enough to move the whole operation outside where there was lots of ventilation. You don’t want to do this on a windy day, either. Wear the rubber gloves, don’t breathe in the powder – treat it like the chemical it is. Off soapbox.

Step 1: Dissolve a packet of dye in four cups of warm water (I get my faucet as hot as it will go).

Step 2: Stir in 4 tablespoons of salt.

Step 3: Add enough additional hot water to your bucket that the clothes will swim freely.  STIR WELL, making sure everything is completely dissolved.

Step 4: Undo all snaps on baby clothes you plan on dying, and then wet them in plain water. Wring them out loosely. This helps the dye absorb more evenly.

Step 5: Drop wet clothes into the dye and start stirring. Keep stirring for the next 15 minutes. You can also agitate with your (gloved) hand, kind of squeezing the dye into the fabric. To be honest, my arm got tired, so I kind of stirred for a minute, took a break, stirred for a minute, took a break.

Step 6: Let the clothes sit in the dye for another 45 minutes. Every 15 minutes or so, stir and agitate.

Step 7: Drain the excess dye from your buckets, and then rinse fabric under cold water until the water runs clear (or almost clear).

Step 8: Hang wet onesies to line dry. FYI – water, filled with dye, is going to drip, leaving a stain. I’m pretending it adds character to my concrete basement floor.

Step 9: Wash the onesies separately in cold water. Throw in the dryer. I was worried that the color would bleed, but I washed the yellow and green batch with an old white t-shirt, and the shirt stayed perfectly white. UPDATE: The orange dye bleeds A LOT! The white t-shirt is now a nice shade of peach.

Here’s the end result.  I love the sunflower yellow, and the tropical green I did in an earlier batch, but I’m not pleased with goldfish orange – it’s way too rusty for my taste. Mr. Tricycle helpfully pointed out that the color is great for camouflaging baby puke.  I looked online, and apparently this same color used to be called “burnt orange” – I would say that’s a much better description of how it turned out. I might try re-dying these onesies with yellow to see if I can brighten them up a bit. If I were to use orange again, I would probably take the fabric out after 20 or 30 minutes, rather than leaving it to sit for an hour.

When you’re hand dying fabric, it’s not always going to look perfect. There might be funky spots or imperfections. I always just hope those spots can be tucked into pants or covered with a fabric appliqué.

Stay tuned for Part II – we’ll add fabric appliqués to our dyed onesies. If you don’t have a sewing machine, no worries! We’ll talk about hand stitching, too.